To Serve a Queen Read online

  ‘I have lived the most part of my life there, Your Majesty. With the Laird of Kilessie, my grandfather, and, since the old man’s death, with his son, the present laird.’

  ‘Your uncle?’

  Francis made no answer to this, but Charles did not seem to notice. He went on: ‘Kilessie? Is not that near Falkland, our palace in those parts? Below the Lomond Hills?’

  ‘Aye, sire.’

  ‘It pleases us to hear your speech. When we came here to London a young child all those about us spoke in the Scots manner, but now there are few come to our Court from thence. We fear our father neglected his northern subjects. We must endeavour to make amends.’

  He turned at last to Lord Aldborough, seeming not at all aware of his discourteous neglect of the noble lord.

  ‘This alderman you spoke of, my lord. A Leslie himself?’

  ‘Master Angus Leslie, sire.’

  ‘The fishmonger,’ Buckingham interrupted again. ‘Hast forgotten, Charles, what I told you of matters in that quarter?’

  But the King, whether reminded or not, paid no attention to his arrogant friend, who spoke with such atrocious familiarity.

  ‘In that childhood we spoke of just now,’ he said again, speaking directly to Francis, ‘we mind us there were two young Scots, the one a scholar that our father favoured and the other our brother Henry for his skill with wounds – God rest their souls,’ he added, piously.

  Low, reverent murmurs filled the room and one or two turned to cross themselves, unnoticed, as they thought, but marked well by Buckingham.

  ‘That other was closer to the alderman than was Sir Francis Leslie, as King James honoured him. His name, as I remember it, Sandy – Alexander, I suppose.’

  ‘Nimmo,’ said the Duke. ‘A dealer in fish like Master Leslie. But in the New Lands, across the seas.’

  ‘What do you know of our Sandy?’ Charles said sharply in a jealous tone that brought an unusual flush to the favourite’s cheeks. ‘He was an outlaw for a season, we are told, but we remember he returned the year our poor brother died and that they met and we heard them talk of the wonders of the New Lands.

  ‘I remember such a one, was it eight years ago? When the Indian princess Pocahontas came to England with her husband – Rolfe, I think the fellow was called – to promote the weed tobacco. That needed no promotion, for it was all the rage and still is.

  ‘In spite of the King’s detestation of its and its universal acceptance. Poor beautiful princess. She died here of a wasting illness that good Doctor Harvey called a consumption. And homesick, most like.’

  Again Charles turned his attention to Francis. ‘By then our very successful Virginian fishmonger had moved to fresh conquests and is, we hear, a great man in his new home, our colony beyond the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam.’ He added, as if continuing to turn over his memories for forgotten treasures: ‘You are not unlike your father, boy, with your great height and promise of strength and the red tint in your hair.’

  Francis was overwhelmed. Where the great Duke of Buckingham had derided, had wounded with deliberately half-concealed laughter, the gentle, the noble king, had offered balm and understanding. He was astounded by the knowledge the pair had displayed, a total surprise. But he saw his allegiance plain. He dropped to his knees before Charles and said with fervour and sincerity ringing in his young voice, ‘I would serve Your Majesty! I beg leave, sire, to serve only Your Majesty!’

  Charles was touched. He was not insensitive like his favourite, nor proud with the born upstart’s usual failing. He had no need to be other than gracious at this time in the new reign. So he gave his hand to the kneeling boy to kiss and in response to the latter’s repeated supplication, whispered now, ‘I would serve only Your Majesty,’ answered with the full dignity of his office. ‘Your plea is granted. His Grace will see to it. My Lord Aldborough, we thank you for this introduction.’

  With more bows, repeated in many directions, the two visitors left the room, Francis too dazed by the experience to notice the fierce looks of those who had been waiting outside for so long.

  But he had not forgotten Buckingham’s half-concealed, but wholly malicious references to his birth and upbringing. His shining admiration for the great man was sadly tarnished and as his adulation had been so innocently unquestioning, so his very sudden disillusion was the more bitter.

  This showed clearly in his report of the whole matter to Master Leslie, though he had enough good taste and good manners not to describe Buckingham’s obvious scorn of trade in all forms, particularly where fish was concerned. But the alderman was not deceived and to Francis’s surprise seemed more amused than angry.

  ‘They forget, these great men, except as it touches their purse, that the very life of a nation depends upon its food and that food must be rightly distributed since it cannot be grown or reared in every part of the realm for the benefit of every small collection of folk. Nor is it by any means so conveyed. The poor and the remote must grow or gather still what they may. Take no heed, boy. His Grace of Buckingham’s true worth is better known to the common people, our City of London and the Parliament, than to the Court and its followers, who cringe to him for favours and fear his slightest displeasure.’

  ‘But he is praised on all sides!’ Francis protested.

  ‘That is because he has declared for a war with Spain, the old enemy.’

  ‘In which I hope to serve.’

  Remembering the King’s gentle encouragement, Francis spoke with a kind of awe, almost a note of worship, that tried Master Leslie’s patience too far.

  ‘The fellow is not King of England,’ he protested angrily. ‘Though he aspires to rule and most certainly doth rule the King himself. Serve Charles if thou wilt, my boy, but England before all.’

  At this Francis in turn became angry. He protested that the King was England, that to serve him was to serve England, that he looked to be called to Buckingham’s force for the planned attack upon Spain, in defence of both king and country.

  ‘And of our Protestant faith?’ asked Master Leslie, drily.

  ‘And of our faith,’ answered Francis, but with less conviction than he had spoken hitherto.

  The alderman broke off the dispute at this point, for he did not wish to antagonise a promising young man, whose present aimlessness was very understandable and whose chief need was for encouragement in finding a place for himself in the world. But later he told his wife the outcome of Francis’s audience, first with the Duke and after with King Charles.

  ‘I would my Lord Aldborough had been less prompt to bring him forward,’ Mistress Leslie said. ‘At least not until after he has seen his uncle, the colonel.’

  ‘There is still no news from Paternoster Row,’ Master Leslie answered. ‘But even if it comes we can hardly look to have the present plans for Francis reversed. King Charles favours the popular wish for war with Spain. That is not surprising after this treatment at their hands and the failure of the Spanish marriage. But he is as dilatory as his late father over giving any useful aid to his poor sister, exiled and penniless. Besides, he seeks now a marriage with France, that other still older enemy. How think you will the people look on that? Another proposed Catholic queen, of a family that persecutes the Huguenots, our brothers in religion!’

  ‘I think the Catholics among us will rejoice and make demands and flaunt the King’s doubtful favour,’ Mistress Leslie said sharply. ‘I think they be dangerous and should be put down as they used to be.’

  ‘I think these religious disputes are very bad for my trade,’ said the alderman, half laughing and half angry. ‘But I think, too, that the good fish in the seas take no part in them, nor for the most part do the fishermen who bring them in.’

  ‘Excepting Alec Nimmo’s father and the like,’ said Mistress Leslie, thoughtfully. ‘That hard old Scot was the prime cause of Sandy’s wildness with his everlasting sermons and judgements and talk of sin and of God’s punishment. When he first came to us from Scotland Alec used t
o speak to me of his father’s harshness.’

  ‘At least young Francis had a gentle upbringing,’ the alderman said. ‘I fear for him on that account. But he must find his own way to wisdom if he can. He is almost a man.’

  ‘I pray for him nightly,’ said Mistress Leslie, sighing. She had a great weakness for vulnerable young men, having had no son of her own.

  ‘I fear the Court,’ said her husband. ‘We have had enough trouble come to us from that quarter. I am too old to bear more.’

  ‘You will never be too old to find a way out of trouble,’ she said, getting up to go to him and kiss him tenderly.

  ‘Send Walter to me,’ he said, patting her cheek. ‘I must write a message for Doctor Ogilvy. I think Francis means to neglect informing his uncle until there is no going back upon the appointment he expects.’

  Chapter Four

  News came to Gracious Street from Doctor Ogilvy within a week of Francis’s visit to Whiteball. The young man’s soldier uncle had arrived and wished to see him without delay. Doctor Ogilvy would ride over on the following morning to guide Francis to Paternoster Row.

  ‘My Uncle Richard invites me to stay there over the next few days, sir,’ the boy told Master Leslie. ‘Then he himself must return to Oxford and my uncle the colonel, after he fulfils his mission, whatever that may be, goes back to Holland. But seeing I have had no further news …’

  He broke off, flushing, not sure how he should proceed. But the alderman, whose long experience of the apprentice age among his various staff guided him now in this family matter, smiled and said, ‘If news comes here for you from Lord Aldborough or the Duke or any Court official I will see you have it without delay. If none comes and your uncles go about their business and leave the Ogilvy house again to the caretaker, you must do me the pleasure of a further visit here until we have your future clear. That I insist upon.’

  ‘You are exceedingly kind, sir,’ Francis answered. ‘I am very much beholden to you for – for all your goodness to me.’

  Master Leslie was touched by the fervent way Francis spoke, his sincerity and convincing gratitude. But he took the opportunity to say drily, ‘I have admired for many years your father – yes, both your true father and that other, my kinsman. You would do well to consider this. I would do much for them both and for any dependant of theirs.’

  Francis stiffened. Master Leslie laid a hand on his arm and said, with a smile, ‘See you remember my words, boy, when you find yourself in trouble either for causing injury to another or suffering injury from one. You have Alec’s temper and you lack Sir Francis’s patience. So trouble you cannot nor will not escape. So pray God you may surmount your trials as they both have done their earlier adventures.’

  He laughed as he turned away. Young Francis would not agree with him, would consider him an old sermoniser who saw the past in a golden mist, all a brave battling for hard-won but now enjoyed rewards. He glanced back as he moved, laughed again and was pleased to see a sheepish smile displace the former childish sullen frown.

  The Ogilvy house in Paternoster Row was much smaller than Master Leslie’s spacious, prosperous dwelling in the eastern part of the City, north of the great Pool, where downstream of London Bridge ships anchored, later to discharge their cargoes at the wharves. In Paternoster Row, under the shadow of the great Gothic church, St Paul’s, there was a very different atmosphere. Learning and scholarship had lived in this house and had not quitted its ambience, though now the oak shelves that lined old Doctor Ogilvy’s library were bare, the books transferred to Richard’s Oxford house, a few of them presented to the Bodleian in the old man’s honour.

  Young Francis was not insensitive. He understood very well the difference in the two houses. He found no more affinity in this than in the other, but less restraint upon his spirit and a loosening of emotion when he remembered that, scholarship apart, this had been his mother’s home, his poor, young, evilly betrayed mother, from whom he had been parted when he was too young even to remember her.

  These thoughts and feelings did not come upon him when he first arrived in Paternoster Row, nor for several days afterwards. There had been the interest of the ride with his Uncle Richard, taking a rather different route from any he had followed before. There had been the entrance from the stable yard of the house, where the horses had been taken over by Richard’s groom from Oxford and one young lad who managed the caretaker’s nag. The caretaker and his wife had come out into the yard to welcome young Master Leslie.

  ‘The colonel awaits you within, sir,’ the caretaker told Richard. ‘He is but just returned from Whitehall.’

  ‘Then his mission prospers,’ Richard said to Francis. ‘Let us go in.’

  They found the colonel upstairs in a small room that used to be Mistress Ogilvy’s parlour. He was five years older than his brother with grey hair cut to a straight fringe above his forehead and of a length about level with his shaved chin, far shorter than Richard’s, which again was shorter than young Francis’s tumbling curls that touched his shoulders. The colonel was dressed in black cloth, having been at the Court that morning. It looked new and was of semi-military cut since he would have to wear it for the usual mourning period abroad.

  He was sitting in an upright armchair facing the door when Richard and his nephew went in. He got up slowly and approached them.

  ‘So this is Kate’s son,’ he said, when the formal bows and introductions had been made.

  ‘Her eldest son,’ Richard said, with an emphasis on ‘eldest’ that brought the ready blood to Francis’s cheek.

  ‘He bears little resemblance to her,’ the colonel answered.

  His voice was clear and carried further than the room. Francis decided, with instantly increased shame.

  ‘Though I remember little of her appearance except as a young child. I have served abroad too long, brother. All this day I have been amazed at the antics and appearance of my fellow-countrymen in Westminster.’ He turned abruptly to Francis. ‘How find you this great Bedlam? I note you have the Scots turn of speech.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Francis, deliberately broadening his accent. ‘I count mysel’ a Scot, sir, since I was reared at Kilessie from an infant.’

  ‘Kilessie?’

  ‘The farm and lands of the Laird of that ilk, that I took until lately to be my grandfather Leslie.’

  Colonel Ogilvy exchanged a quick look with his brother and then said, ‘He continues to resent his bastardy, does he? Now, young man, have a care how you insult the memory of the dead and the honour of the living. I have always served the Crown; His late Majesty and now King Charles and more particularly that prince’s sister Elizabeth, Madam, the exiled Queen of Bohemia. Among the high-born and the great a man will acknowledge his bastard, bring him into his home, educate him, find him employment, very often with his country’s army. His circumstances are known; they are not held against him; he has no cause for self-pity nor any need for revenge.’

  Francis, to whom this blunt and authoritative mode of speech was as fresh as a plunge into a Scottish loch, bowed his head to acknowledge he had heard his uncle, then held it up again, pale with anger, but already a little enlarged in wisdom.

  Colonel Ogilvy watched him with satisfaction. The boy had quality as well as a personable appearance and a body that promised notable strength. He had never seen Alec Nimmo but had heard a good deal in several quarters of that turbulent fellow’s brief career in London, his crime, his outlawry, his escape to the new lands, later pardon and present sober success. His carelessly begotten son should make a valuable rescruit to the army, given his introduction to a reasonable discipline.

  ‘I think we should take Francis over this house,’ Richard said to break the silent but obvious antagonism between the two others. ‘It was, after all, his mother’s home and Kate was our father’s favourite child.’

  He moved to the door and the others followed, Francis last as was suitable. They were met at the foot of the stair by the caretaker’s wife, who told th
em she had placed wine and sweetmeats in the library. So they went there first, though Richard winced at the naked look of the shelves and the colonel growled a curse at the poor smoky fire. There was a chilly north wind that day and though a few Dutch bulbs were flowering in the little walled garden their petals had been blown wide open, threatening to fall, and the buds on the cherry tree looked brown and parched.

  Francis took the glass he was offered and went over to the window. Presently Richard joined him.

  ‘Your mother loved to sit with her story-book or her sewing in that little arbour,’ he said. ‘She cared nothing for learning. She could read; my father, your grandfather, was a school-master, you must remember, he taught her, but she was not an apt pupil. She was like my mother, who cared only for the Court and its doings. An unprofitable passion, since the great days of the old queen sank and passed away, though my mother would never acknowledge it.’

  ‘I have been told my lady mother had great friends at Court,’ Francis said in a defiant voice.

  The brothers glanced at one another, but made no answer to this, until Colonel Ogilvy said quietly, ‘Great men can be dangerous.’

  Instantly a picture flashed into Francis’s mind of the only truly ‘great’ man he had seen, Buckingham, lolling beside the King, cold, insolent eyes sweeping the assembled Court, taking to himself the adulation, magnificent in his glittering funeral clothes, awe-inspiring, cruel. Francis protested, recalling the sovereign’s kindness. ‘I saw no danger in His Majesty’s gracious presence.’ And went on: ‘My mother had noble friends abroad, or so I have been told. Was she not with them when she died?’

  ‘No, Francis,’ Doctor Ogilvy said, as the colonel made no attempt to answer. ‘She died at sea, going to the Low Countries as you have rightly been told.’

  ‘They did not tell me she never reached her friends.’

  The boy was both shocked and angry. So much secrecy, so much more hidden guilt, he concluded. He burst out, ‘Then she was in ill-health when Sir Francis allowed her to travel! How could he do so? Unattended? Surely …’